Pursuing Tax, Bill de Blasio Embraces Snowball’s Chance in Albany

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Mayor Bill de Blasio, who has been arguing that Albany should allow New York City to levy a new tax on home sales above $2 million, at a press conference at City Hall.CreditJoshua Bright for The New York Times

For almost two years, Mayor Bill de Blasio has been arguing that Albany should allow New York City to levy a new tax on home sales above $2 million.

He talked about the so-called mansion tax in at least five separate events in one month in 2015, attempting to create momentum in Albany that never materialized. He has pushed it at a dozen events since rekindling the idea during a January budget address, and with increasing tenacity in recent weeks, including while chomping pickles at a diner with three older constituents on Facebook Live and during a mass conference call on Monday.

The State Senate majority leader, John J. Flanagan, a Republican, has called the idea a “non-starter.”

Likewise, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo has seemed uninterested in helping out Mr. de Blasio, a fellow Democrat. “That proposal was made in January,” the governor said on Monday. “It never went anywhere in January and it hasn’t gone anywhere since.”

Nevertheless, Mr. de Blasio has persevered, eagerly playing the snowball to Albany’s hell.

He has dismissed those who say it cannot get through the state capital, and compared it to universal prekindergarten, one of his signature initiatives as mayor, which initially met resistance in Albany. But whereas that effort ultimately succeeded, the main sticking point was in fact a new tax on high-income earners that Mr. de Blasio wanted to levy, to pay for it. The tax component quickly fell by the wayside, but not before the mayor’s stubborn insistence, still near the outset of his term, set him permanently on the wrong foot with Mr. Cuomo and Republicans in the State Senate.

In this case, Mr. de Blasio has pushed for the proposed additional 2.5 percent tax on home sales by saying the revenue it would generate, an estimated $330 million, would be used to pay for rental assistance for older citizens, a key voting bloc as he campaigns this year for re-election. He held two news conferences last week to talk about it, one in Albany, where he had traveled for that express purpose, and one outside 432 Park Avenue, a towering hyper-luxury condominium with some of the most expensive apartments in the city. There, his focus on the issue clashed with the interests of reporters, who asked about other subjects.

For Mr. de Blasio, there are political advantages to raising the issue even if it goes nowhere. He can claim he took the high road on something he believes in — taxing the wealthy to pay for services for the less fortunate — and reach older voters, a key demographic during an election year. For the conference call on Monday, the city employed robocalls and other means to contact about 190,000 people about the proposal; the mayor’s office said more than 26,000 people got on the line in some fashion.

Building a coalition in support of tax increases now could also help offset what are expected to be deep cuts in federal funding to the city and state when President Trump and the Republican Congress enact their budget this year.

“The $15 minimum wage was once declared dead on arrival,” said Bill Lipton, the New York State director of the Working Families Party, which backs the mayor’s effort. “Whether it’s in the next few days or over the coming months, working families are going to demand that new taxes on the rich be part of the solution to Trump.”

Mr. de Blasio was able to count a win on Tuesday in another area of housing policy: a state court judge preserved a freeze on rents in regulated apartments that had been championed by the mayor and opposed by landlords.

Mr. Cuomo, for his part, is negotiating with State Senate Republicans to extend a tax on those earning $1 million or more; if it were to lapse, the state would see its revenue fall by about $4 billion over two years. But the governor has not been open to tax increases. “I don’t want to raise taxes,” he said on Tuesday.

The median price of a home affected by the mayor’s proposed tax would be $3.4 million, according to the Independent Budget Office. This is not so much the price range in the new residential towers high above midtown; it is closer to that of the Queens home that once belonged to Mr. Trump’s family that was sold this month. Under the mayor’s proposed tax, that sale, for $2.14 million would have generated about $3,500 in new revenue.

Some budget watchdogs have expressed caution at the proposal, and observed that the state already has a version of a mansion tax for homes over $1 million. “This type of transaction tax is volatile because it depends on the ups and downs of the market,” said Carol Kellermann, president of the Citizens Budget Commission. “So if a regular source of new revenue is really needed, this is not good choice of a method to get it. And is it really needed?”

Along the way the mayor has managed to step on the toes of a natural ally on the issue: older citizens.

In Albany last week. Mr. de Blasio said that AARP, the advocacy group for people 50 and older, was helping to lobby legislators for his tax proposal. He repeated the assertion at his New York news conference.

But the group later put out a statement saying it was not true, and while it favored the goal of rent relief for older tenants, it had not taken a position on how that relief should be financed. In his weekly radio appearance on WNYC last Friday, Mr. de Blasio acknowledged the flub, saying, “I certainly will take responsibility for my team if we misunderstood that particular nuance in their position.”

Brad Lander, a Democratic City Councilman who often stands shoulder to shoulder with the mayor, lamented on Tuesday the stranglehold that the state legislature has on many issues affecting the city, saying of the proposed tax: “It doesn’t have a chance of passing and that’s been clear from Day 1.”

Asked why the mayor was spending so much time pushing an idea that not even his allies thought was viable, Mr. Lander shrugged and said, “Politics?”

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A25 of the New York edition with the headline: Pursuing Mansion Tax, Mayor Embraces a Snowball’s Odds. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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